With Darkstalkers out of the way, Yoshinori Ono, producer, dug into the development of Street Fighter X Tekken. We talked about adapting Street Fighter characters for Tekken’s combo heavy system and Tekken wrestlers like King for Street Fighter fans.

Using the cross rush system, its easier to get in an opponents face and string together a long combo. It’s say that’s more Tekken-like. How did it feel to take the characters you know from Street Fighter IV and adjust them for this more aggressive style gameplay?

Yoshinori Ono, producer: Marvel vs. Capcom 3 gave us an example and in all of the Vs. series titles all the way back to X-Men vs. Street Fighter, the Street Fighter characters there have combos and moves that were never in Street Fighter games, but they still feel Street Fighter-like. Even in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 when you do launchers and air combos there is no doubt you’re playing Ryu or another Street Fighter character.

We have an established pattern of taking characters out of their comfort zone and having them still feel like the characters you know and love. We took some cues from those games. With Street Fighter X Tekken, we want to preserve the Street Fighter feel, but we don’t want to make the game so Street Fighter-like that we alienate the Tekken fans. Half of the characters in there are for them to enjoy, as well. We made adjustments to give them longer combos and integrate them in the cross rush system. I think we’re in a pretty good place now, they still fell as you’re accustomed to while they have new moves they can do too.

What about the wrestlers like King? How did you translate his moves into Street Fighter x Tekken?

That wasn’t necessarily as hard as you might think. Street Fighter has this reputation for being a game about projectiles, but if you really break down the roster – there are more characters without projectiles that there are with projectiles. There has always been grappling characters who get in your face with punches and throws, so I think wrestling characters fit right in.

The one thing Tekken does differently is when you knockdown a character you can pummel them on the ground. I think we’re going to replicate that feel using the more traditional Street Fighter inputs. If you get a chance to play the build at Comic-Con, I think you will find King and [Craig] Marduk feel as you would expect them to.

Have you finalized the roster?

Yes.

OK. I know you can’t tell us which characters are confirmed, but can you tell us two characters that are definitely out? One from Street Fighter and one from Tekken.

On the Street Fighter side, I can tell you Dan will not be in the game. You may remember he was killed by a Tekken character at Comic-Con last year, so he won’t be in Street Fighter X Tekken. [Laughs] As much as I personally wanted to have a cool Nina and Anna tag battle, the director was against putting Anna because we already had Nina in. Sorry to all of the Anna fans out there!

When we were talking before you said Dhalsim was your favorite Street Fighter character. Who is your favorite character from the Tekken side?

I played the entire Tekken series from the very beginning and when I started it the impression I got was less about the game being cool, it was more about the wacky and unique characters. The ones that stood out to me, and are still my favorites, were Nina and Paul. Nina has a lot of cool combos you can do that are unique compared to the other characters.

Paul is more of a thinking man’s character. You have to play him almost in a Street Fighter way where you keep your distance and do your big moves when you can. I like those two. Your next question might be ‘Hey you haven’t announced Paul yet?’ You’re right I haven’t…

Speaking of unusual characters you seem to be a fan of Blanka.

I love Blanka and we sent a crew to Brazil to look for him. If we can find him he might end up in this game. If he manages to evade us he may not make it in. [Laughs]

Tekken games have robust character customization. Will we be able to customize say Ryu in the same way with similar features in Street Fighter X Tekken?

We’ll talk more about that at Tokyo Game Show, but I will give you a hint now. We’re probably not going to do that, but it might be to a different degree and a different type of customization than you might expect to fit the Street Fighter and Tekken characters.

The Tekken games tend to have wacky mini-games. Do you think we’ll have anything like Tekken Bowl or Tekken Force in this game?

We’re thinking about stuff like that. Personally, I’d like to see something that revolves around the tag mechanic for a mini-game or another mode. That said, we’re working very hard on finishing the main game. If we can get that to a good state where we have extra time to play around, we’ll definitely do that and we can talk about that then. Right now, it depends how development goes.

You brought fighting games to the PC with Street Fighter IV. Why isn’t there a PC version of Street Fighter x Tekken?

I don’t want to giveaway too much, but I can say we listened to fans with Street Fighter IV. When we didn’t put Super [Street Fighter IV] on PC we listened they were upset and put AE [Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition] on there. It was a month late, sorry about that. We are really happy with those results, it’s on the top ten on Steam downloads and we’re paying attention that. We are certainly considering doing something similar, but I don’t want to talk too much right now.

And 3DS?

It’s possible. For the 3DS, I wanted to do an [Super Street Fighter IV:] Arcade Edition version, but I haven’t had a chance to do that because of all the other things I’m up to. At the company, we’re debating should we go for an AE port on 3DS? Should we skip that and go straight to Street Fighter x Tekken? There are a lot of things up in the air, so I can’t say for sure what our next 3DS project will be.

What will move the release AE on Nintendo 3DS forward?

This is driven by my personal policy and the team’s policy is once you put out a product you also have to follow up, take care of your audience, and make sure their needs are being met. When we talked at the panel we wanted to get feedback from users on rebalancing and tweaking they would like to see in Arcade Edition.

It would be the same for 3DS, we released Super and we want to make sure people are being taken care of. That’s basically my thought process behind how we take care of fans. We just don’t want to drop a game of them and run away. We’d like to keep the community going, communicate with them, and listen to their requests.

You’re known for creating fighting games, but let’s say one day you stopped working with Street Fighter. Which Capcom franchise would you and your team want to work on next?

A Capcom IP [intellectual property]? Capcom IP… hmm… my hands are full with Street Fighter right now and I’m so happy about that it’s hard to envision doing something else. I’m so obsessed with Street Fighter and fight games I can’t even think about what other games I’d like to do at the moment. I guess I would take a weird approach and do some kind of unrelated gesture based Kinect game. [Laughs]

Yeah, I hope Anna will be added later on. The Williams sisters tag team would be perfect.

raymk

inb4superultimateoranyothervariationofit

Exkaiser

inb4peoplenotseeingitcoming

SDDMN

You know, it is sort of a logical choice to make Super Street Fighter IV Arcade 3D edition for now, and wait until Namcodai releases Tekken 3D. With Tekken 3D, more fans of both Street Fighter and Tekken would want to see SF x T brought to the 3DS. Though I’m one of the probable few who want SF x T on 3DS first. Am I making sense, people?

ThunderGod_Cid

A 3DS port would be interesting, but how about a WiiU port?

IF it does get ported to the 3DS, will it have a console exclusive character like the Vita version?

If it does, my vote is for Sheik or maybe Captain Falcon or maybe both.

SDDMN

I’d like to see Sheik, Captain Falcon or maybe…and I’m probably pushing this…Mario. I mean come on, who doesn’t want to see everyone’s favorite italian plumber take on Ryu or Jin? It would be a funny thing to watch, at least.

Uh, you’ll notice I said anymore. MVC3, their most recent fighting game, was bare bones and we were charged extra for event and shadow mode. I just wouldn’t be surprised if future releases were similar. :)

Exkaiser

Of their last three fighting games, two of them had minigames and one did not.

I’m sorry if I don’t see that as grounds for saying one way or the other that their next fighting game will have minigames.

For example, say this were 1998. Marvel vs Capcom not having minigames doesn’t mean that no future Capcom fighting games will include them.

And of those last three games, MVC3 doesn’t have any mini-games and SFIV didn’t have the bonus stage mini-games off the bat, you had to wait for SSFIV to play those. Only Tatsunoko vs Capcom had mini-games akin to the likes of Tekken Bowl or Tekken Force. That being said, I’m still inclined to say we won’t see mini-games, unless it’s via dlc or the eventual upgrade to Super Street Fighter vs Tekken. I’d love to be wrong though.

“there are more characters without projectiles that there are with projectiles.”. I sat here for three minutes trying to think of all the characters in SFIV that don’t have projectiles, and I could only name Dudley and Zangief. Granted, I forgot a bunch of people on the roster XD It’s been awhile since I last popped SSFIV into my PS3. But I was able to think of over a dozen characters WITH projectile moves. Even sh*tty ones (like Sakura).

One can dream…….but, I can’t give up! There’s the Namco version, so maybe they’ll have some of the characters I want! Hell, they have Evil Ryu, AND Jin, who we all wanted! (Plus Devil Jin for more epicness).

At least they put in many good characters, but I couldn’t care less for Abel and Bob, in my opinion. They better have a special character for Xbox 360 users (No I won’t get this game, but I don’t think it’s fair that only PS3/PS Vita users can get a special character so far, which is Cole from Infamous).

pgover

The roster is finalized, that doesn’t mean their done announcing characters. Finalizing the roster just means there are not going to be any more debates on which characters get in and which ones are going to be absent. Many more characters are on the way to be announced.

I can understand that. I just hope it isn’t just a HD remake. Well if it is that would be nice ^^ but if they just announce that it is coming in some collection with nothing new I would be a little annoyed.

Capcom’s upper management will crush his spirit and then he will rage quit like Inafune. Then out of spite Capcom will kill any franchise he had a hand in.

Exkaiser

You can’t crush Ono’s spirit.

thebanditking

I don’t think Capcom is quite that dumb, pushing Ono out the door would only hinder them further. Understand something about Inafune, the guy is a bit of an ass and likely brought much of his problems on himself. Think about this you work for a Japanese company in Japan and you your self are Japanese, yet at every press related event you walk around talking to everyone about how Japan sucks and how their games suck and how difficult it is for you to get you own company to make games and how they need to be more “western”.

Then in your great effort to make “your” dreams come true you make a big title that is designed to push and prove your philosophy and it bombs during one of your employers worst financial earnings (Lost Planet 2). Then rather then shut up you keep saying the same things. It would be like working for the CIA and talking about how America sucks and preaching the glories of Communism, to the Director lol. He may have some valid points but not all of what he says is true and even if your saying those things with good intentions (the road to hell is paved with them they say) you just don’t walk around telling the press that the industry and company you work for sucks.

Moriken

How can you be sure that (some of) the one’s you mentioned are not in? They finalized the roster, but they haven’t disclosed ALL of the characters in the game yet…’_’?

thebanditking

Those characters are in the game, two of them will be available as DLC for $5 each after release and the rest are in Ultimate SF X Tekken, didn’t you get the memo?

epy

“We’d like to keep the community going, communicate with them, and listen to their requests.”

We seem to be talking about completely different companies here Mr. Ono. I appreciate the sentiment though.

Oh, is it true what you both said above? I heard that Capcom tried to continue the project even after Keiji left the company. If they did, then I don’t think that was a good idea, because they should’ve cancelled it as soon as Keiji left, then we would have understood, but if they continued even without Keiji, than suddenly cancelling it, isn’t that just messing with us there?

thebanditking

The difference here is that Ono is the “fighting game guy” he loves fighters and everything about them. Because of that he is fighting game fans inside man at Capcom, and while I don’t like the guy much Keji Inafune was the Mega Man guy most of the hope for those games left with him.

FireCouch

So because Megaman didn’t get into MvC 3, Capcom doesn’t listen to their fans at all.

That explains them adding spectator mode in Mvc3, putting Poison in SFxT, putting Strider in MvC3, attempting to balance characters like Sentinel, Phoenix, and Wolverine in MvC 3, nerfing Sagat in Vanilla Street Fighter IV… I could go on.

-don’t do an SSFIV Arcade Edition port to the 3DS. No one will care. You’ve mined Street Fighter IV as hard as you can. Law of diminishing returns, brotha. We’ve all moved on and are looking forward to Street Fighter x Tekken (and Tekken x Street Fighter)

-Personally, after bringing Cody, Guy and now Poison into Street Fighter (and let’s not forget Zangief’s alternate, Mike Haggar, costume!), I personally think it would be awesome if you were to move onto a Final Fight revival after finishing up your current slate of fighting titles. Like how Team Ninja moved from Dead or Alive onto Ninja Gaiden? Sure did turn out well for them:) I would LOVE to see a full-blown, HD console, well produced, action-adventure-brawler revival of Final Fight in the same vein as Ninja Gaiden, DMC, God of War or any other contemporary brawler. But with SFIV’s visual style? That would be AMAZING!

Tokom23

And I thought I was the only one who wants the Beat em’ up genre video games to be revived for all these years. Least someone hasn’t forgotten.

thebanditking

your not the only one, far from it. Just that most of the fans never have the opportunity to bring it up.

This is probably why Scott Pilgrim VS. The World The Game is one of my favorite Video Games.

Kitestwinblades

Interesting… ground pummeling. I know about tech recoveries but if they manage to integrate some kind of ukemi, that would be wicked. I’ve already seen a few characters dive for their life. Maybe the floor recoveries will be similar to Blazblue, but a tad slower. Ibuki and Xiaoyu please.

I’m really liking everything i hear about this, since it looks like it wont be just another street fighter entry. The Tekken elements give it just that nice little twist to give it a different flavour whilst still staying a street fighter game at its core. The ONLY thing that bothers me about the game is how shiny and metallic all the characters are, i mean even their skin looks like some kind of metal alloy, its just wierd. Loving the roster so far though.

He can skip the 3DS port of both TxS and SF4 AE if you ask me, I would much rather them move on to other projects then worry about making sure each platform gets a port of everything they make. 3DS got SF4 and Vita’s getting this, personally I am likely getting this game on Vita and waiting for the Ultimate version on the PS3. Let them worry about what platforms DarkStalkers will appear on ;)

Exkaiser

Starting to get kind of interested in this. I’m not a fan of Tekken, but this does sound pretty fun.

Depends on the rest of the roster how pumped I’ll get, though. I do like the return of Poison.

darkfox1

DO AE 3DS PLEASE IM WAITING. Also I think this is needed because I wonder if it was a 3Ds limitation on the BG it didn’t move… Yeah for some reason this REALLY bothered me and I wonder if they made a AE version on 3DS they would put moving BG’s in. Also the online mode lacked the character themes the Console version had. I really hope all this isn’t a 3DS limitation because if it is then even a AE Version couldn’t fix it. Wonder if someone can confirm this.

That was Great But In interview why they didn’t talk about vita’s version??
Anyone Is Happy And Exited To Know Something About Street Fighter x Tekken Vita’s Version And Why do they put the main character from Infamous Witch actually is a special char from the game?(Don’t Remember The name , but is that guy with electric powers.) I Wanna Know Every Thing About That and anyone agrees this.

PrinceHeir

PC version please :P

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